


Come With Me

by seaofolives



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: 5 Times, 5+1 Things, Canon Compliant, Canon Timeline, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, First Meetings, First Time, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mild Blood, POV Chirrut Îmwe, Pre-Canon, Pre-Movie(s), Pre-Rogue One, Puppy Love, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-04 01:17:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10979349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaofolives/pseuds/seaofolives
Summary: Throughout his life, Chirrut Imwe has always put his trust on Baze Malbus. So when Baze tells him, “Come with me,” he goes without question.





	Come With Me

**Author's Note:**

> An entire fic inspired by that one line in _Rogue One_ which may have even been ad-libbed.

“Would you like to come with me?”

It is the first kindness that has ever been extended to Chirrut Imwe since he started off on his journey to be a Guardian of the Whills, and it takes him by surprise. The last time someone had shown him generosity, he was still a boy who belonged to the world. A boy who still had parents—although he could not be called an orphan. Yet. Perhaps. Abandoned—that is what he is. His father had been killed in an unfortunate accident, caught in a crossfire between two gangs. Chirrut had been no more than an infant then. Left on her own, his mother then worked herself to the bone until her abused body caught up with her. Until an incurable disease had latched onto her muscles and until all the doctors and faith healers of the Holy City were shaking their heads and looking at poor Chirrut with pity. She could no longer support both herself and her child, but she could not let both of them die, as well.

So, trusting in the Force, she’d come to the Temple of the Kyber and begged for them to take her boy before Death took him. The Disciples received him with utmost humility and put him in the path that they walked. Days later, Chirrut would meet the abbot of the Guardians of the Whills and be surrendered to his tutelage. There is something about the way he perceives the Force around them, the Disciples were saying, as he was led away to begin his new life. What exactly it means, he does not yet know. 

But there are many things he does not yet know to begin with. And this is one of them; kindness is one of them. He has known it before but it has become different now because he is alone and there is no one who can speak for him anymore. 

He tries, first, to see if his throat works. And when it does—to his great dismay—he finally tells the older boy, “I do not think that I can. I am not sure I am permitted to come. I was not invited.” His voice rings hollow in the empty corridor, barely scraping at the high ceiling.

“Oh,” the older boy starts, looking a little out of clue at Chirrut. But he does not shuffle his feet the way Chirrut does when faced with the attention of an Elder, or suddenly sway the way Chirrut might. He stands with his shoulders squared, and his chin up as any true follower of the Force would. Chirrut feels like reducing his world to his toes but resists. He must look him in the eye as is expected of a Guardian initiate. As is expected of him while he remains within these walls.

With a shrug, the older boy adds, “Well, I think the invitation is just for formalities’ sake. It’s a prayer. So long as your heart is true, you can come.”

“But the guests.”

“This is not the first time the Jedi have paid a visit to the Temple. I do not think there is even a Council member among them,” the older boy tells him. But he shrugs again and continues, “But if you don’t wish to go, that’s fine. It will not be a mark against you.” Chirrut was not thinking about that just then. “It’s just that…I thought you looked lost.”

But only because he is. Since he began his lessons in Guardianship, he has always been told where to go, what to do, who to find by the Elders. When his tasks are done, after the last meal and the last prayer, he retires to his bedroom and awaits the new day. But with the Elders occupied, he does not know where to go and what to do.

And he does not have friends.

Despite himself, Chirrut attempts a smile. “I heard it said, that when one is lost, one need only trust in the will of the Force to find one’s direction.” With a limp shrug, he adds, “I was just hoping to look the part.”

“And how is that working out for you?”

Not very well, clearly. But for what it is worth, Chirrut gives another shrug. “I will find out,” he says more confidently than he feels. It slips his notice when his eyes wander to his feet. “Once I find the will of the Force,” he finishes more quietly.

There is a heartbeat of silence, and then the crash of something that reminds him of a wardrum. Chirrut jumps with a frightened gasp, staring wildly at the older boy who is curled forward, as tightly as if he were in pain. He is crying…or so he thought he was.

It takes Chirrut two seconds to understand that the wardrum never existed. It is the older boy, and he is not crying.

He is laughing.

Chirrut feels something warm flutter up to his skinny chest. It makes him smile, but new, young and self-conscious, he tries to hide it behind biting teeth.

Even so, when the older boy’s delight fades to a happy sigh, he looks at Chirrut with a bright grin on his face. His cheeks are blushing, and Chirrut thinks it is becoming of the boy to look so joyful. “You are a funny one, aren’t you? Has anyone ever told you that?”

Still biting his lips, Chirrut shakes his head. “But no one has ever laughed at something I said so heartily as you have.”

“My friends often say that among us, I have the strangest sense of humor,” the older boy tells him with a flippant shrug that ends with crossed arms. “What do you make of that?”

“Is that why you prefer to attend a prayer gathering than the company of your friends?”

The older boy grins at him, and this time, he grins back, full of bravado he does not remember carrying before he met this character.

“Then I suppose I must do something about that, mustn’t I?” the older boy replies with another shrug. “Would you help a friend out, then?”

Chirrut feels his heart swelling, and without a breath of hesitation, he nods happily. A friend is a precious thing to have. All at once, these walls suddenly feel like home—warm, kind and familiar. “If that is the will of the Force,” he says, “then I will be glad to lend a hand or two.”

He joins the older boy, and together they walk, side-by-side, feet moving in almost-perfect synchronicity.

“I’m Chirrut Imwe, by the way,” Chirrut tells the boy with a turn of his head.

“Baze Malbus,” he replies. Chirrut tries the name in his mind, rolls it in his tongue, and finds that he likes it. Baze Malbus. It is an easy name to remember.

❖

He barely lets the silence settle before another scream tears free from his chest. It burns a hot trail from his worn heart, out through his raw throat and it is exhausting, but he does not stop. That fire keeps him going. He feels his bones shaking with all his unspent rage and more pours out.

But when he falls quiet, as he so often must and does, he hears only the feeble whimpers that rack his chest, and that makes him angrier still. He cannot keep screaming, though; his head hurts, and his voice is already gone. He feels sore all over, a dull knife stabbing him in the neck and it is painful to choke and gasp but he cannot stop. He wants to gouge his eyes out with the hands on his face but he cannot feel them beyond the fatigue and the swelling on his knuckles. 

“Have you been punching that tree, Chirrut?”

The question catches him unawares, and he hates it. Chirrut jolts suddenly, pain stabbing him on his shoulders and his back, as he searches for his unwanted visitor. He finds him standing near the door that leads back to the Temple and for once, he is glad for his ailing eyes. Across the garden, he cannot see the expression on Baze Malbus’ face. He cannot bear to see another look of disappointment tonight. 

He frowns, and dips his head, hiding his face from the young man behind raised arms. “Go away,” he tells him with a broken voice. “Leave me alone.”

“I think we have established by now that that is a mistake,” Baze responds calmly. Slowly, he approaches him. “If I had not found you here, I fear you would have destroyed the entire garden. The abbot will be most displeased.”

“So what is new?” Chirrut chuckles humorlessly. “He is already displeased, what is one more poor action before the night ends?” He looks up just then. His eyes are tired and red from so much crying but he cannot think about hiding it anymore. “How did you find me?” he croaks. 

Baze stops two arm spans from the man under the canopy, sitting in the company of old roots. He points slightly behind him. “I asked the Elders and heard you screaming.” He points to the tree behind Chirrut. “And then I saw the trunk and saw your bloodied hands. I put two and two together. In case you are also wondering how I knew about what you have been up to since the test.”

The memory of the test puts a bitter taste in Chirrut’s mouth. He frowns, eyes falling to Baze’s sandaled feet. He draws further into himself as he gathers his knees and wraps his arms around his folded legs. He cannot move his hands. They hurt too much, as though he had just held them in ice cold water for hours on end. “One mark,” he utters, voice cracking. Baze does not say anything. “All I needed was one more mark, and I would have achieved my next duan. I was so close, _so close_. But all my hard work…” He shakes his head. “All my prayers have been for naught. I cannot even perceive the world around me anymore! You come and I could not sense you. I cannot find the Force!”

Baze still remains silent. When Chirrut looks up to him again, he sees that his friend is frowning sadly. It irks him, and he snarls, “Do not look at me like that. I do not need your pity, Baze Malbus.”

Baze glares at him in turn. “Well, what do you want me to do?” he asks impatiently, throwing his hand sideways. “Do you want me to say anything?”

“I do not think that there is anything you can say tonight that will soothe the sting of failure,” Chirrut mutters. 

Baze snarls, “You are not the first Guardian to have failed his tests, Chirrut. We all had our bad days.”

“Why do I find it hard to believe that?” Chirrut asks him. “This especially coming from you?”

“What is so wrong with that?”

“Everything!” Chirrut laughs without amusement. “Do you even hear yourself? You are _Baze Malbus_. You have achieved more duans than any of us have ever managed in our age. You know the scriptures forward and back and you can stand to win every match you’re put up against. There is _nothing_ you cannot do!”

Baze frowns again. “You know that is a lie,” he says to Chirrut, but quietly, as though he were confessing a long kept secret. He does not speak again after. 

Chirrut furrows his brows, staring at him. Waiting. 

Baze only looks at him, suddenly resembling a puppy who might have misbehaved and must now face up to it. Finally, with a shrug, he says softly, “I cannot stand to see you like this.”

Chirrut does not expect that, and he does not know what to say because of that. His lips are open, ready for the next acidic words but they are doused by Baze’s raw honesty, and he forgets them completely. His mind is scraped clean and all his instincts and his spite have turned to ash in the wind. Baze Malbus reveals the one thing he is incapable of doing, and that is seeing _him_ in pain. When did that happen? How is that so? 

Baze smiles briefly but barely. He shuffles towards the stunned Guardian and bends down to take his battered hands carefully. “Come with me,” he tells him. 

“To where?” Chirrut asks, but allows the man to help him up his feet. 

“To the med bay, where else?” Baze lifts a brow. “Your fists are more useful to you intact than broken. The Force does not stop flowing, no matter if it is a river or a mountain that stands in its way. So too must a Guardian keep on. What is one failure, Chirrut? But simply another lesson to be learned.”

Shame fills Chirrut’s face, and suddenly he finds it too heavy to carry. Baze Malbus’ words ring true to him, as they always have ever since they were young and they became friends, and he is embarrassed for his lack of spirit. How can he truly call himself a Guardian, if one mark is enough to break him like a rock? 

He does not catch Baze pulling him to an embrace until those long arms of his have enclosed him completely. His grip is strong and firm, and he smells of incense and vanilla, and it calms him. Chirrut raises his own arms around his friend and holds him in return, pulling him closer, half his face buried in his shoulder. 

He can hear his pulse, feel the beating of his heart as if it were his own. Baze breathes, and so does Chirrut. And the trees that sway in the cold wind and the packed earth on which he stands. He feels the rustling leaves at the core of his being, listens to the Holy City far beyond like a sleeping animal. The Force is alive and it is with him. 

Baze has given it back to him.

❖

He can no longer see very well with his own two eyes, and so he accepts Baze’s company when his friend insists upon it. No matter that they both know how needless it is for such kindness.

One and a half standard decades. That was how long Chirrut has called the Temple of the Kyber his home. Since his mother left him to give him a better chance at life. Since Baze found him in one of the corridors, wandering, lost, and became his first friend. The Temple of the Kyber has changed but little since, and everything is as familiar to him as the prayers of the faithful. 

Not everything remains the same, however. Once, Chirrut did not know what it is he desired in life, now he knows everything that he wants by name. Once it is only friends, good marks, a grasp of the Force and a proper understanding of his faith. 

Now he looks at Baze beside him, and he sees not only his friend, but his lover and a galaxy within. He has grown beautifully tall, and his shoulders are broad and handsome and his hands are big and warm. He likes to grow a beard and a mustache for as long as he can get away with them, and Chirrut thinks it is always a sad day when he must be rid of them. In the passing years, Baze has grown quieter whereas Chirrut has become chattier for the both of them. 

But not everything is different. Baze still grins and laughs for him, he still looks for him and looks _after_ him. Chirrut still knows him for how he feels in the Force. At least, when the time comes for his eyes to fail completely, he knows he will not lose Baze at all. 

It is a warm night, a sure sign that rain is about to fall very soon, and they’d spent it outside over a flask of tea and some stolen cookies. They rarely spoke, rarely even touched their hands or rubbed their arms together. Chirrut was the one who had stepped forward and laid out his affections for his best friend, who had accepted it with stumbling words and all of his heart. But for a big man, he is rather shy, and still blushes to the ear and tries to hide his smile whenever they should do something together outside the privacy of four walls. It is just one part of Baze Malbus that makes Chirrut weak in the knees. 

But there is something else that he wants. Baze is enough, he is more than what Chirrut needs. But Chirrut is a young man, curious and in love. He knows the Force will forgive him for wanting more not only for himself, but for the man that held his heart, as well. 

They come to the middle of the silent corridor, and Baze stops next to his room. Chirrut tries not to hold his breath when Baze punches in his access code and the door slides open upwards. He smiles cheerfully when Baze looks within, the tips of their fingers still connected to each other. 

“I must be up early tomorrow to lead the dawn prayer,” Chirrut begins his parting words. “So I shall see you tomorrow during breakfast?”

“Yes,” Baze says, sounding stiff. “Tomorrow morning during breakfast.” Chirrut’s brows meet. The man sounds like he needs to go to the lavatory now. “Goodnight, Chirrut.”

“Goodnight, Baze.”

Baze starts forward but stops to hesitate for one count, before he reaches for Chirrut’s cheek with a clumsy kiss. Chirrut grins all the same. Their fingers slip. Chirrut starts forward, counting the steps that will take him to his own quarters. 

But he barely reaches _five_ before Baze seizes his wrist and yanks him back. He turns, a look of shock in his face. 

“Come with me,” Baze tells him, but Chirrut does not hear it for how it sounds—calm, suddenly eloquent—but for what it is—a breathless request. A _plea_. 

The door slides shut—and Chirrut is on the other side of it. He stumbles slightly when Baze pushes him towards the wall and he barely has time to catch his breath before Baze is sucking it from his open mouth. He tastes of tea, and something warm and delicious and it sends Chirrut’s senses blazing wildly. This, this is exactly what he wants and more. The hungry strength of Baze’s mouth on his, his tongue sliding along his own, his walls and his teeth. Their hands grope for whatever there is for them to find. He yanks at the back of Baze’s robe in a desperate effort to loosen it. Baze’s arm slithers around him and his hand reaches for the shape of his ass and squeezes. A delightful tingle shoots up Chirrut’s spine and he groans happily, nudging his pelvis forward to encourage him to do it again. Baze responds differently: he pins him to the wall with his other hand and crushes his lower body into his. 

His gasp tears Chirrut free from Baze’s mouth but he is too distracted to search for it again with Baze’s rolling hips. They come in waves of pleasure, the next more eager than the last. Less clumsier, more careful. This is what he wants to live for, Chirrut has decided—the forward press of his pelvis and the upwards glide and back again. Baze feels heavy and hard, and it makes Chirrut giddy with excitement. 

The first thunder of a rare storm rumbles like a canyon breaking. The rain comes soon after, crashing in angry droves, a wall of sound that confines the lovers in their own private world, muffling even Baze’s grunts and hurried breathing, and the drawn out moans that Chirrut sings, one note reaching higher than the last.

❖

“Hey! Hold it right there!”

He does not hold it right there. He keeps moving, spinning, and throws the capped head of his uneti stick with a sure swing and a surer _crack!_ He does not stop even to wait for the body to meet the concrete in a clatter of limbs. 

He has already glided back and ducked before the particle beam sears the air over his head, taking down another of his attackers, somewhere, he predicts, along the region of her clavicle. He spins the staff in his hand again, silver head out. 

He twists, facing left, free arm out, a human arrow as he strikes his vicious staff up the larynx under the helmet, shattering the cartilage within. The staff spins in his hand again when he draws back to his full height, heels clicking before he slides his right foot outward again, bending his knees while he brings his silver cap near his open left near his heart, his weapon pointed outward. 

The pattering feet of reinforcements arrive on time. Slowly, he breathes in, taking in the scent of dust, of blaster fire, of smoke, of blood and piss and something else overripe, and releases them carefully through his lips, shoulders falling with his exhalation. _I am one with the Force,_ he prays to himself, adjusting his grip around his walking stick, _and the Force is with me._

He counts them as they approach—four, six, seven. Seven heartbeats racing, seven blasters charging, seven ways to die. He feels their falling feet under his steady ones, the tension in their muscles in his…

He turns, and runs as they come into view, rounding the corner. “Hey, you! Stop there!” One of them commands but he does not stop. He keeps on, like an ex-convict on the run, a thief caught with his hand in the money jar. He runs and they follow, helmets crackling, plastoid armor thumping. 

_I am one with the Force and the Force is with me, I am one with the Force and the Force is with me…_

He prays as he dashes past silent walls and shuttered windows. The orders come again, telling him to stop, then change quickly to include his death if it cannot be avoided. His echo-box clicks on diligently on his hip and it tells him that the dead end is only 20 paces away. Sixteen. Twelve. Seven…

His foot lands on some planted contraption and kicks him up in the air. He reaches—blindly—for purchase with his two hands. A leap of faith. 

The stormtroopers stop. “Open fire!” one of them commands. 

A particle beam flies past his shoulders, and another and another. Seven particle beams. Seven cries of pain. 

Chirrut makes his own when he grasps the edge of an old steel barrier and slams the rest of him onto its face. He scrabbles to get to the top until someone grabs him by the back of his robe and pulls him up. 

“Well, that plan worked,” he says, getting on his feet. He feels slightly dizzy from the jump and the impact and for standing on a ledge, one that is made of three pieces of wood perhaps already repurposed a few times. 

How it can carry Baze’s weight and that of the Morellian cannon and its coolant tank is a miracle Chirrut is keen to attribute to the Force. “I don’t need the Force to make my plans work,” Baze grunts. “You okay? You look winded.”

“Nothing a warm cup of Tarine tea won’t fix,” Chirrut assures him cheerfully, even when he looks past his shoulder and frowns over the bodies sprawled on the ground. 

Baze grunts again, although it sounds more like a snarl. A perfect match to the approaching march that seem to have come out of nowhere. There are five pairs from the sound of it. “In here,” he mutters urgently, his heavy footfalls leading Chirrut to what sounds less like a room and more like a glorified box. 

He ducks in, past a small square opening that might have once been a window in its previous life. He hops off the sill with barely a noise even with the hollow acoustics and slides quickly behind a wall, framing one side of their entrance while Baze takes the other. 

They are out of sight by the time the squad of reinforcements arrive to find their fallen comrades. Chirrut knows this from the feed passing between their helmets’ comlinks: Seven troopers down, sweep the area, inform HQ. But he and Baze are as still as the very stones that made the room, becoming one with it. His echo-box reports only silence. They will not be found so easily. 

But they will have to be careful from here on out. Until the stormtroopers find someone to blame, they will be upon the Holy City like a scourge, an infection bleeding with pus. 

He feels, then hears, Baze Malbus move, his weapon up, surely trained towards where it matters. He anchors himself to his quiet footfalls, following his path towards the center of the empty room, then past it. He is weighing their options for escape. 

Chirrut keeps to his corner, flexing his fingers around the neck of his uneti staff, adjusting his grip. He breathes deep, inhaling the old dust, the old stones, and Baze’s musk among them, and breathes out, returning himself to his core. _I am one with the Force,_ he prays again, one ear picking up the shift in Baze’s movement, the soft rattle of his gun’s cable as he returns the cannon to the side of his tank, _and the Force is with me._

“Chirrut,” Baze beckons to him, stepping urgently towards his side. “Come with me.”

He barely has to say it; Baze runs forward and he is only one heartbeat behind the man, just enough to give him a good lead time lest they trip on each other’s feet and bring their doom upon themselves. As before, he follows blindly, trusting only in three things to keep him alive: his skills, the Force, and Baze Malbus. 

Baze jumps through another window, falling, and Chirrut vaults after him.

❖

He feels the heat of the blaster fire zip past his ear, but that is all. Had he, at that point, landed on a different foot, he is sure he would have lost one side of his face by now and it will all be up to the Force to finish what he set out to do.

But the Force has plans for him yet, and he is its devoted servant. He shifts, slightly, whichever way the Force blows, at every warning the echo-box feeds him. He feels a particle beam land where his foot had once been, the spray of debris that explodes so closely to his side. He tastes it in his mouth, tangy like iron. 

And still, he does not stop. He walks the martyr’s march, becoming the doctrine upon which he was raised: strength of will. Patience. Faith. While the world is burning all around him, a stirring cloudy mass of darkness and light and darkness and light again. While the air shrieks with fighters, beams and falling bombs. While Baze Malbus cries in the midst of it all, “Chirrut! Come back!!”

He hears him, but he does not obey, and cannot. Still he prays, “I’m one with the Force and the Force is with me.” And still he walks, because there is nothing else that can be done. This is the will of the Force—in this he feels certain, for all that the galaxy is telling him to turn back. 

And he does find it in the middle of a prayer and a raging firestorm—a console raised high enough to meet his thighs with a selection of dials and other controls. He leans his staff against it while he gropes for the object of his quest—a single master switch that will open the line between the ground and the atmosphere. The line to hope. The world falls silent in his ears. Baze falls silent.

He finds it at the right hand side of the equipment, wraps his fingers around the T-shaped handle and pushes it all the way up until the machine gives the slightest vibration under his fingers. Chirrut breathes out a soft laughter, smiling. He’s done it. He remembers the pilot from all the way home who has asked them, pleaded for them to make this work—and he has. He has done just that. He must let them know to let him know that the task is done. 

He reaches for his walking stick, turns back and the world turns with him, like a dial flipping on. And the result is a cacophony of sound that crashes into him, like waves of cymbals and static and fireworks that stun him like a heart attack. He feels lost in a labyrinth, trapped inside a whirlwind which will tear him apart if he does not tread carefully. He needs a guide, a tether that will lead him to safety. 

And the Force gives it to him, calls him by his name and tells him, “Come! Come with me!!”

Baze Malbus. 

He is not yet through the whirlwind and yet he already knows he is safe. Home. His connection to the Force has gone but he can still find his presence in it, as surely as if he could see through his own eyes. It brings a smile to his face, and he moves. Back to where Baze is calling him. His faith is strong, in the Force and in Baze Malbus. He will obey, as he always has. He will come with him as he always has. 

The roar of an angry volcano takes him by surprise. The ground gives out under him and there is nothing he can do but fall, flailing for purchase and failing. His brief instance of panic ends with a surprising crack when his face meets the earth, and it is like something that tears him open, head, body and feet. Pain lances through him, following a secret fault line he never knew existed. Chirrut feels the world spinning, digging knives into his many parts which makes it terrible to try and breathe. It feels like the fire of the planet’s core has burst forth and sipped into his battered lungs. He chokes, tries again to fight for his life, against his very own shattered bones. 

It does not take him long to realize that this is it. That this will be the last of him. Baze crying out his name and charging past the blazing war zone almost makes him choke in his own blood as though they were his tears, but his body is no longer capable of that function. At this point in time, he can only lie still on the ground, nose down, and remove the pain from his mind. 

Or maybe he is already fading… 

Baze finds him and rolls him to his back, and still Chirrut Imwe cannot move. “Don’t go,” he begs him, fear in his voice. “Don’t go. I’m here.”

“It’s okay,” he tells him, even when he knows it’s not. “It’s okay,” he says again. Maybe this time, it will be. He tries to look for him with his hand but misses him and needs Baze to catch him as he stares into nothingness. His strength is failing him and he is tired, so tired of holding it all together. Time is running out but he cannot leave Baze like this, distraught and scared. 

“Look for me in the Force,” Chirrut tells him, his voice no more than a failing whisper, “and you will always find me…”

If only his heart can leap and feed him with life again when Baze Malbus responds with the mantra of their faith: “The Force is with me, and I am one with the Force.” How long has he waited to hear that deep voice say it again? He remembers those days spent in the Temple of the Kyber, wandering its empty hallways, the light splashing down the polished floor from the gargantuan windows. The echoes bouncing between walls, and in the midst of them, a pair of boys playing, laughing. Seeking a hidden corner to spend a private moment with each other. It makes him smile but his body can no longer obey him. 

Before Chirrut Imwe fades completely from existence, he shoots out one final prayer to the Force, with the last strength of his entire being: 

_Come with me, Baze Malbus…_


End file.
